Clean Maids, True Wives, Steadfast Widows: Chaucer's Women and Medieval Codes of Conduct

by Margaret Hallissy

Chaucer was a keen observer of the lives of women with a remarkable ability to see beyond his culture's preconceptions concerning their proper roles. The lives of medieval women were divided into three estates--virginity, wifehood, and widowhood--each with complex rules extending to particulars of speech and dress, but all directed toward the single purpose of preserving female chastity, for which a woman was to be prepared to suffer or even die...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0313274673
• ISBN13: 9780313274671
• Release Date: February 1993
• Publisher: Praeger
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.6"